


Sub-Rosa

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Blood and Water [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst, Bodyswap, Crack, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 13:29:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8491573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt: "Stargate Multiverse, John Sheppard + Evan Lorne, John offers to help Evan do his job for a day, and Evan is not appreciative."John thinks because he's in Evan's body he can do Evan's job.





	

Beckett and Elizabeth agreed: no one could know about the Ancient device malfunctioning on the two of them. Because it would only have swapped the bodies of two people who were very close at the time the device triggered.  
  
Very, very close.  
  
Elizabeth knew, Beckett knew, and Rodney knew.  
  
Rodney assured them that the effects were temporary, would last twenty-four hours at most. But they should probably avoid, _you know_ , the entire time. Evan knew John’s body almost as well as he knew his own, but he’d never expected to get to know it from a first-person perspective, and it was...strange. John was taller, narrower through the shoulders, had a different center of gravity.  
  
And he wasn’t kidding. His hair really was _just like that_. Evan spent fifteen frustrating minutes in front of the mirror before he finally turned away and strode out of John’s quarters with all the dignity he could muster.  
  
Elizabeth and Beckett had recommended both men take the day off, let Teldy stretch her wings a bit, but John insisted that no, it would be fine, it would be a learning experience.  
  
“So we can see how the other half lives.”  
  
“Sir,” Evan said, “why don’t you take the day off? I can handle both of our jobs for one day.”  
  
John raised his eyebrows, and was that what Evan looked like when he was being insolent? No wonder his father had hit him so much when he was a child. “You saying my job is easy?”  
  
“No, but you don’t have any pressing matters or offworld missions, and -”  
  
“Your job is a breeze, isn’t it, Major?”  
  
Evan bit back a protest. Elizabeth, damn her, looked amused.  
  
“Doc,” Evan began, turning to Beckett, but John just scooped up Evan’s data pad and made for the door.  
  
“See you for lunchtime check-in, _sir._ ” John winked and ducked out of the room.  
  
Evan tapped his radio. “For the record, _Major_ , I have very carefully-cultivated supply lines, and if you mess them up -”  
  
“Don’t worry, I know how this works. I’ll just make Kusanagi -”  
  
“If you finish that with _an offer she can’t refuse_ , I’m revoking your bargaining privileges,” Evan said.  
  
John laughed at him. Actually laughed at him.  
  
Elizabeth said, “You’d better get after him, _Colonel._ ”  
  
Evan scrambled out the door, hollering into his radio at Chuck for ‘Major Lorne’s’ location as he went.  
  
As it turned out, Atlantis wasn’t very cognizant of when body-swapping occurred, so she purred in the back of Evan’s head all day, and he was pretty sure he could feel Jumper One (John called it Delilah, Evan refused to give girls’ names to any of the jumpers) reaching out to him and sort of _nosing_ like an attention-seeking puppy. Atlantis also hid John’s location from Evan, which was frustrating, and okay, maybe he finally understood John’s frustration with Evan vanishing whenever he needed to facilitate a trade on Atlantis’s sub-rosa economy.  
  
Because all day, Evan couldn’t find John, and he’d had a series of meetings scheduled with the various heads of departments to make sure certain trades were coming along: coffee from the botanists in greenhouse three in exchange for moonshine from the chemists’ still at the end of pier twenty-seven in exchange for the KP Marines on duty this week setting aside specific goods, like brownies for Rodney’s birthday and chocolate-covered strawberries for a special night Evan had planned for John.  
  
Evan’s efforts at finding John were frustrated at every turn by Major Teldy having a question about gate team rotations (John made and approved changes, Evan simply updated the information on the military’s bulletin boards, the proto-Facebook some of the IT gang had designed just for Atlantis), or Captain Stevens wanting to know if the Marines had approval to deploy some explosives indoors to free up some space to raise some Pegasus almost-hens, or Sergeant Stackhouse wanting to arrange some war games as a final test for the newest batch of civilians looking to get gate-rated for addition to a gate team.

By the time lunchtime rolled around, Evan was more than willing to admit that John’s job was difficult and at times stressful, and he was starving, and he was very, very nervous about what John had done. He drifted through the chow line with his tray, nodded vaguely when one of the KP Marines said, _The usual, sir?_ , and when he finally sank down in his usual spot, he realized that he hadn’t gotten his usual but John’s usual.  
  
John sat down opposite him with Evan’s usual, and they stared at each other’s trays for a moment before swapping.  
  
“You know,” John said quietly, “when I first met you, Dave thought you were some kind of - boytoy, for the men you were with.”  
  
Evan had accompanied his Uncle Henry and his two chief bodyguards, Bannon and Bryan, to Boston to retrieve Skinner and Shortshanks, who’d thought they could skim money off of the profits of Evan’s chop shop operation. Evan had been taken along as a backhanded compliment. He ran his own crew. He could accompany the adults for adult conversations. And he’d screwed up with his own crew, and it would be his job to administer consequences.  
  
He’d thrown up when he saw Ritter’s body that one time on the Unas planet not because the sight of the corpse scared him but because it brought back sharp memories of what had been left of Skinner and Shortshanks after Evan had finished with them.  
  
“My father said you’d be a force to be reckoned with, that you were good.” John pushed his potatoes around on his plate. “I never realized how good.”  
  
“I’m your 2IC,” Evan said. “It’s my job to make sure things run smoothly.”  
  
“And they do. Run smoothly.” John flicked his gaze at Evan. Then he leaned in. “What are the silk ties for?”  
  
“You’ll find out when it’s time,” Evan said.  
  
John stuck close to him for the rest of the day, and Evan sent out carefully-worded emails, canceling the rest of the appointments that had never been on his calendar, and John locked the door of the command office, and together they got drunk and sang old Irish drinking songs.  
  
When they woke the next morning, they were back in their own bodies. John stumbled back to his quarters to shower, and Evan did the same. Then he spent an entire day smoothing over ruffled feathers, rearranging bargains, and rueing his ability to tell John Sheppard no.  
  
He’d never, ever let John try to do his job again. There were some things John shouldn’t have to do or know or see.


End file.
